(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a treater oven, which is a device necessary in the process of manufacturing a prepreg.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Generally, a treater oven dries and solidifies resin on a fabric using convection heat transfer by heated air with high temperature, and radiation heat transfer by heat plates attached to the wall of the treater oven.
The radiation heat transfer is not affected by flow characteristics, but the convection heat transfer is different. Heat can be uniformly transferred by the convection heat transfer only when the air flow inside the treater oven is uniformly distributed. That is, in order to uniformly dry and solidify resin on the fabric, air flow inside the treater oven must be maintained to be uniform, and thereby a prepreg having a uniform gel time of the solidified resin, which is an important physical property, can be manufactured.
A conventional treater oven provides heated air from the heat exchanger to an air supply portion through a single pipe to an upper air inlet portion thereof, and branches off the supplied air in the air supply portion to an air distribution discharge portion having a pair of inlets, and thereby the heated air is introduced into a passageway where the fabric passes.
The introduced heated air passes by the front and rear of the fabric and dries/solidifies the fabric together with the radiation heat of the heat plates. However, since the flow of heated air from the air supply portion to the air distribution discharge portion is not symmetrically distributed to both inlets, amounts of air passing both sides of the fabric are different from each other, so that amounts of heat transfer are also different and accordingly there is a temperature difference between both sides of the fabric.
Furthermore, in the conventional treater oven, in order to achieve a uniform velocity distribution of heated air all through the whole pipe conduit guide vanes are installed inside the air distribution discharge portion in order to divide the heated air evenly to left, center, and right segments on the fabric, and dampers are also disposed in each of these segments to control the amount of heated air flow. However, since it is impossible to maintain a uniform air velocity, which is changed depending on the lapse of time, the kind of prepreg, and the temperature condition, the gelation time varies in front and rear portions and in left and right portions of the prepreg, so that inferior goods may be manufactured.